Thirteen Days
by Inuyashagirl2015
Summary: That's how long she was in that cell. That's how long it took her mate to come for her. Aela/OFC This is related to the IPod Shuffle that I also just published. Explanation inside. Yuri, femslash, etc.


Hey guys, it's me. Three updates at a time? I know, shocking from me. Well, the thing is, one of my other fics, which was also Aela/Dragon, was an Ipod Shuffle (except I'm a cheater and I don't follow the rules), as you may know, and when I was writing the tenth song, the song was "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" from Sweeney Todd, and this was the idea that popped into my head. Problem was, I was just starting "Day thirteen" when I realized "Holy Crap, this is already really freaking long and we haven't even gotten to the part that I thought about the most" So, I just decided to move what I already had over to a separate document, expand on what I already have a little and then write as long as I want to on it. So, here you go.

_**FF won't let me have a page break line so this is what I'm using in its place**_

I've been in this cell ten days. Ten. Fucking. Days. I was supposed to return to Jorrvaskr seven days ago. Almost the entirety of the Silver Hand in the base had left to invade Jorrvaskr six days ago, leaving me and the other, mostly feral, werewolves with all of four guards to prevent our escape, and also, I suppose, to give us food and water, though that wasn't too hard. I got a cup of water once a day and a tiny portion of bread every four days. It could have been worse I suppose. The human body can go three days without water and thirty days without food as long as it's not really doing anything, and, well, being chained to a chair and all, I wasn't expending much energy as it was.

The party sent to Jorrvaskr was supposed to return three days ago, and every day that they did not arrive both cheered and tormented me. Cheered because I'm pretty sure that it means that they all died, including their asshole of a leader. Tormented because it's only about a day's march, half a day's run, and less than that on a horse or in wolf form to get here from Whiterun, and there was no sign of any sort of rescue. I was in constant agony, partially from the chains, which hurt more and more as my wolf tried to break free, and partially because of my wolf itself. My wolf was crying and howling inside me constantly, and its fears and insecurities were starting to make more and more sense every day.

Is our mate hurt? Has she been killed? She would have been the one to come and rescue us by now if she hadn't. Does she just not want us anymore? Is she mad at us for getting captured and is leaving us here for our weakness? Why hasn't she come for us yet?

At first, I just hushed it, thinking that there's no way that Aela got killed, we'd have to feel it if she was. Mates don't work like most humans think that they might, but surely we'd know. If she was hurt, she'd send someone else for us, no doubt. She might be displeased that we got caught when I spent days assuring her that I was awesomely stealthy and most certainly would _not, _and she'll probably never trust me about something like that again, but she wouldn't just leave us here with the torture and the silver and the lack of freedom, she just wouldn't do that. Of course she still wants us. There's got to be some other reason as to why we're still in here. Some possibility that I haven't even considered yet. As you can probably tell, my wolf is not alpha material, and the fact that our mate is also my wolf's creator just makes it that much more needy.

But as I've said, ten days is a long time, and thoughts inside your head are a lot harder to ignore than voices outside of it. It's actually making me start to doubt what I first thought. After all, I don't know overmuch about mates, I might be totally wrong about being able to feel your mate, and even if I'm not, I can barely feel anything other than the constant burning of the silver that I know will leave permanent scars. Maybe she is mad at me for being so weak. I find it hard to believe that Aela would do anything like that, but then, maybe I don't know her as well as I think I do. All I can do is wait and see.

As the eleventh day rolls around, and I wake up full of envy at the sound of birds outside my window, who obviously have and are enjoying _their_ freedom, I find out that my remaining four guards are leaving. They've decided to go find out the fates of their companions (as well as The Companions) and finish off the remaining "monsters" if necessary. I find out from the woman who has been giving me my meals and water this whole time. She tells me, when I ask her why I'm getting more water than usual and my portion of bread is early. She tells me, and in the back of my mind, I'm vaguely sad for her. She is the only one that hasn't been totally horrible to me, and I'm also pretty sure I've got a fever and I'm delirious by now. I'm not so fond of her that I hope that they let her live, but I do hope that her death isn't a horrible painful one, which I think, under the circumstances is particularly generous of me. They leave a few hours later, and it's only during the night when it's pitch black that I realize that I'm the only living creature in the entire base.

The twelfth days rolls around, and after a fitful sleep, when I wake up in the morning and realize that I'm totally free to do anything that I can do, since there are no guards around to trap me again if I do somehow manage to break out. It's only when I fall over in my chair, smack my head on the floor and I see a tiny puddle of blood form that I realize that no one is around to help me, that I think about what a bad idea it probably was to try at all. I pass out for a small amount of time afterwards, and I wake up sometime in the afternoon, judging by the type and amount of light flooding in through the small window in my cell. My head is pounding worse than any hangover, and I realize that in this position, there's no way that I could possibly try to scoot or slide myself over in this position and I curse myself from the billionth time. Some amount of time after that, my wolf finally quiets down and goes to sleep, leaving me with a gnawing feeling of loneliness that I haven't felt in… Well, ever...

On the thirteenth day, I can feel my tongue turning black and swelling from dehydration and my lips feel like sandpaper, and it's all I can do not to purposely cause my chapped lips to crack and bleed just to get some moisture into my mouth. In the afternoon I finally give in and do it. It's then, then and not my short stint as a vampire, that I realize that blood tastes like rust and despair, or maybe that's just my mine. Who knows?

That night, perhaps seconds, perhaps hours after the sun goes down, I hear the sound of footsteps and crashing. I immediately assume that my guards are back, and as much as I hate myself for it, I'm a little bit glad. At least now they've either give me some Gods damned water or kill me. At this point, I'm actually kind of hoping for the latter. Then an angry looking werewolf comes into my view and I immediately assume that one of the other wolves has found some way to escape, even though I was sure that all of the others were dead. I envy that wolf, whoever it was, though I know that I can expect no help from it, as I know for a fact that I was the only one down here who hadn't gone completely feral. The wolf stared at me with a look that, if I didn't know better, I would say was shock. Hell, maybe it was. I'll bet it that that it was the only one down here too.

Neither the other wolf nor I did anything at all, until my own wolf, sensing the other in such close proximity, suddenly woke up. Not only did it wake up, it _woke up, _immediately beginning to struggle for control in a way that it had not done since the first night when I was turned. If it weren't for the chains, I would have most likely turned immediately, even in my weakened state. The dulled pain that I had been feeling ever since my wolf had gone to sleep flared into searing agony, worse now that it had been even before, smoke beginning to rise off of my re-burning skin in steady streams. The pain was so intense, and I was so damaged, so broken by the thirteen days that I had endured, that I couldn't even hold myself back, and I screamed as tears began to run down my face, or, more accurately, they ran down the left side of my face and onto the floor beneath me. After all that and now my wolf decides it's going to be territorial or whatever the hell it means to do, causing this pain that I knew the beast wasn't feeling even half as well as I. Forgive me if my emotional state isn't quite equipped to handle anything right now.

Through my blurry vision, I could see the other werewolf flinch, and then, surprisingly, shift back into a human being, but I just didn't care anymore. I closed my eyes, and curled up as best I could, which backfired on me as the silver chains dug even deeper into my long-abused skin.

Before I even knew what was happening, the sound of a door, my cell door unlocking, echoed throughout the cell. My head snapped in that direction, the sound shocking me out of my self-pity for a moment, and when my eyes dried enough, I was in for an even greater surprise.

Aela.

She was leaning over me, grabbing the lock on the chains that was behind me, though it was too far from my hands to pick, even if I had had a lock pick. Which I did, originally, until I dropped it trying to bend my arm enough to reach the lock and they took it away, on the second day that I was in here. I knew that her hands were probably burning from directly touching the silver, she wasn't being particularly careful not to burn herself. Within seconds, I felt the chains go slack, and felt her try to pull the off of me, and we discovered something horrible.

The silver, almost pure silver, apparently, had been on my skin for so long, that I has actually started to heal around it, and so in some place, my skin and the chain were fused together because of my wolf healing. I couldn't be free of the damned thing without a significant amount of pain and blood involved. Fuck.

Aela was cursing more violently than I had ever heard her, or anyone else for that matter, do as she tried to think of something. After a moment of tense contemplation, she unwound the parts of the chain that had been around the chair and laid me down on the cold stone floor, pushing the now loose parts of the chain away so that no more chain was directly touching my skin than there already was.

The freezing stone floor didn't reduce the heat of the burns, and in fact actually made it a little worse because of the confliction, but at least I wasn't tied to a chair in the same position I had been in for almost two weeks. I doubted I would be able to move my muscles at all for at least a few days after this. An unusually gentle hand absently carded through my hair as my mate continued to examine my injuries. My wolf was completely content and happy just to be back by its mate's side, which I thought was just not fair, seeing as it's kind of all of its fault that I'm in this much pain and it's barely feeling any of it. Fucking wolf. Though I must admit, despite the pain, it felt pretty nice to have her rubbing my head like that. That was usually something that she only indulged me in when I was drunk as hell or after sex.

So when suddenly stood up, I immediately retreated into panic mode. I tried to tell her not to go, but my parched throat couldn't even make words and all that came out was a dry, strangled sound that sent me into a weak coughing fit.

She stopped and knelt back down immediately, shushing me like I was a helpless, hurt child, and I suppose I probably looked like one right then too. And then, of course, I felt really stupid when she assured me that she was just going to try to find some water for me.

Even though my wolf whimpered inside of me as she walked away, I didn't freak out again as she left my line of sight. It didn't take long for my sensitive ears to pick up on the sound of sloshing and immediately afterwards she was back, holding small bowl of water in one hand.

She helped me sit up, and by helped, I mean she did all of the work since I couldn't even move, and when she had me propped up against her chest, she placed the bowl against my lips and slowly tilted the bowl up until I felt the water leak into my mouth. I don't think that I've ever tasted anything half as sweet. The small amount of water in the bowl was not nearly as much as I wish that it was, but that was probably for the best. If I had my way, I would probably drink so much that I would have to puke some of it back up. Not a pleasant option.

"I've got to get you back to Jorrvaskr." She spoke into my ear, not letting me go after the bowl was empty. "The problem is, it's going to be really hard to not hurt you more or burn myself on those chains. But, if I were to rip them off now, I can't even imagine how much that would hurt, not to mention you probably shouldn't lose too much more blood and I still have to carry you all the way back. It's your choice, what do you want me to do?" I really appreciate that she's pretending that I am lucid enough right now to be making any kind of decision for myself. Especially one like this- basically the difference between "Ow Goddamnit!" and "Motherfucking Ow!" because I choose to classify levels of pain by phrases that I would probably use if my throat wasn't still way to dry to scream.

In the end, I chose the latter option, figuring that it would probably have to be done eventually. I'm not even ashamed of the fact that I passed out halfway through it. All I can say it this- Everything ended up alright sort of. My wolf never got a chance to freak out, probably because she apparently stayed close enough that she could see me the entire time I was out. I healed a lot fast since the healers didn't have to take the chain off of me themselves and when I woke up, the amount of pain I was in was so insignificant compared to what it had been for the past two weeks that I barely even felt it. And when, finally, one night when we were alone in our little alcove of the temple, I asked her why it had taken her so long and she told me, I found that I could sleep easily for the first time since I had been saved. Yes, I had plenty of nightmares afterwards, and I was very delicate (in many different ways) for a long time after that, but we got through everything eventually. If we were in some cheesy fairy tale book, the ending would probably end up looking like this.

And the two Companions Princesses lived happily ever after. The End.

And you've got to admit- fairy tales may not be realistic, but they definitely have a certain appeal to them.

_**FF won't let me have a page break line so this is what I'm using in its place**_

Alright, I'm done! That is three updates at one time, so you better freaking enjoy them. For the record, I love Skyrim and it makes me so happy to write anything at all related to it. Anything in general is awesome, but out of all four fics I have so far in Skyrim, BTTNM is still my favorite and that is why... I don't know, I'm gonna do something else with it. I'm still not sure what, and if you have any specific way that you want me to go about it, write a sequel, some one shots, I don't know, please feel free to leave a review or PM me and tell me what you think. Also, if you have any plot ideas you might want me to think about doing, I'm open to those too. Just letting you guys know that.


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